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Trivia!Girl
Jun. 16th, 2004 10:50 amYou know what I want? (*pause*; I can hear Judith's voice now saying, "No, Hol, I never know what you want.")
I would like a book that did a survey of world geography, and examined the difference between what things are called in English, and what they are actually called by the people who live where the things are found, in their own language. And that explained, in the first place, the origins and meaning of the name in the original language; and furthermore, explained why it is that the thing is called what it is called in English.
This is something I've been curious about off and on for a long time, but I thought of it again recently because of a book that I'm reading, that mentioned that the Yangtze river is actually called something like the Chang Jiang by the Chinese (who, I am willing to bet, do not call themselves "the Chinese"). And that brought me up short. Because I know about certain obvious examples of this (we call it "Greece", they call it "Hellas"; etc.), but there are many, many more examples that I've never noticed. I would have assumed for years that "Yangtze" was in fact an accurate English transcription of the river's actual name. And you know, maybe in some twisted, etymological way, it is (bearing etymological history in mind, "Yangtze" is not that far removed from "Chang Jiang", you can kind of squint at it and imagine "Yangtze" as some earlier English-speaker's attempt to transcribe what he was hearing.) But, I don't know, and I'm curious.
And I'm even more curious about things like the Greece/Hellas example. Hellas is quite obvious as a name for the country -- I mean, we have had the term "Hellenic" as a synonym for "Greek" for forever. But where the hell (pardon me) did we get the term "Greek" from, then? And why?
(And I don't just mean -- examples where our official term for a nation is one thing, but in the nation itself it is something a lot longer and more complicated. That's a different phenomenon, although interesting in itself.)
Why do we persist in calling foreign things by our names for them, instead of using the names that the people themselves use? And don't give me the obvious answer, "because we, like the British before us, are imperialist bastards" -- even though the phenomenon probably has its roots in that truth.
So I could look it up. I could try to look up Yangtze; I could try to track down the Greece/Hellas thing. But my point is, there are hundreds of examples of this kind of thing all over the world. And I've love to read a book that delved into all of them, or at least, into many of them. For countries, ethnicities, famous natural features, etc.
If anybody knows whether such a book exists, please tell me!
The book I am reading right now that sparked this train of thought was loaned to me by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
raqs, who in turn was loaned it by Thomas from Munich (which, I would like to point out, is actually called "München" by locals).
The book is called Last Chance to See, and it was written by Douglas Adams. Yes, that Douglas Adams. He wrote it along with a naturalist named Mark Carwardine, and it is a nonfiction account of the two of them embarking on a project to travel around the world and try to see in the wild a number of extremely rare and endangered animals (komodo dragons; white rhinos; mountain gorillas; kakapos in NZ; river dolphins in China; etc.). It's part travelogue, and part intelligent musing on the problems of extinction and conservation. And all of it is wrapped up in the kind of wry, witty writing that you would expect from Adams. I can't recommend it enough.
(Since this copy must, alas, go back to Thomas eventually, I plan to order one for myself; actually, I didn't even think to check to see if it is available in the U.S. Huh, apparently so! I wonder if the U.S. edition has the photos in it, though. Worth trying, at least.)
I would like a book that did a survey of world geography, and examined the difference between what things are called in English, and what they are actually called by the people who live where the things are found, in their own language. And that explained, in the first place, the origins and meaning of the name in the original language; and furthermore, explained why it is that the thing is called what it is called in English.
This is something I've been curious about off and on for a long time, but I thought of it again recently because of a book that I'm reading, that mentioned that the Yangtze river is actually called something like the Chang Jiang by the Chinese (who, I am willing to bet, do not call themselves "the Chinese"). And that brought me up short. Because I know about certain obvious examples of this (we call it "Greece", they call it "Hellas"; etc.), but there are many, many more examples that I've never noticed. I would have assumed for years that "Yangtze" was in fact an accurate English transcription of the river's actual name. And you know, maybe in some twisted, etymological way, it is (bearing etymological history in mind, "Yangtze" is not that far removed from "Chang Jiang", you can kind of squint at it and imagine "Yangtze" as some earlier English-speaker's attempt to transcribe what he was hearing.) But, I don't know, and I'm curious.
And I'm even more curious about things like the Greece/Hellas example. Hellas is quite obvious as a name for the country -- I mean, we have had the term "Hellenic" as a synonym for "Greek" for forever. But where the hell (pardon me) did we get the term "Greek" from, then? And why?
(And I don't just mean -- examples where our official term for a nation is one thing, but in the nation itself it is something a lot longer and more complicated. That's a different phenomenon, although interesting in itself.)
Why do we persist in calling foreign things by our names for them, instead of using the names that the people themselves use? And don't give me the obvious answer, "because we, like the British before us, are imperialist bastards" -- even though the phenomenon probably has its roots in that truth.
So I could look it up. I could try to look up Yangtze; I could try to track down the Greece/Hellas thing. But my point is, there are hundreds of examples of this kind of thing all over the world. And I've love to read a book that delved into all of them, or at least, into many of them. For countries, ethnicities, famous natural features, etc.
If anybody knows whether such a book exists, please tell me!
The book I am reading right now that sparked this train of thought was loaned to me by
raqs, who in turn was loaned it by Thomas from Munich (which, I would like to point out, is actually called "München" by locals). The book is called Last Chance to See, and it was written by Douglas Adams. Yes, that Douglas Adams. He wrote it along with a naturalist named Mark Carwardine, and it is a nonfiction account of the two of them embarking on a project to travel around the world and try to see in the wild a number of extremely rare and endangered animals (komodo dragons; white rhinos; mountain gorillas; kakapos in NZ; river dolphins in China; etc.). It's part travelogue, and part intelligent musing on the problems of extinction and conservation. And all of it is wrapped up in the kind of wry, witty writing that you would expect from Adams. I can't recommend it enough.
(Since this copy must, alas, go back to Thomas eventually, I plan to order one for myself; actually, I didn't even think to check to see if it is available in the U.S. Huh, apparently so! I wonder if the U.S. edition has the photos in it, though. Worth trying, at least.)
